The Transparency Society by Byung-Chul Han

Byung-Chul books always have a high signal-to-noise ratio. His reasoning goes to the point, without wasting time on anecdotes or stories to illustrate the topic. The Transparency Society is no exception. The author denounces transparency as a neoliberal dispositive and extracts the consequences from different perspectives. In the Transparency Society, transparency is enforced and a mean of control. Bentham’s Panopticon Byung-Chul Han compares in different moments the society of transparency to a modern version of Bentham’s panopticon. The panopticon is a prision designed so that the possibility of constant observation instills self-discipline into the prisoners. This prison has a central watchtower surrounded by cells arranged in a circle, so the guard can see the prisoners while the prisoners cannot tell when they are being watched. This makes power “visible and unverifiable”: the authority is always present in principle, but its exact moment of observation is hidden. The metaphor is…